In a motor vehicle, what are known as online vehicle functionalities may be provided, which utilize communication data that are received from a vehicle-external object and/or emitted to the vehicle-external object via a wireless link. One example of such a vehicle functionality is car-2-car communication, such as is described, for example, on the website www.car-2-car.org. The car-2-car messages represent the communication data in this instance. Remote maintenance is another vehicle functionality of this kind, in which software updates are transmitted to the motor vehicle via a wireless link and loaded into or stored in a control unit or a control device there. The software update then represents the communication data. Each of these vehicle functionalities can be implemented by a function program.
In today's motor vehicles, it is generally provided to provide these function programs in the communication unit, which also includes the at least one wireless module by way of which the respective wireless link to the at least one vehicle-external object, which is to say another motor vehicle or a mobile communication network, for example, is provided. This has the disadvantage that the number and/or the scope of the function programs is limited by the computing power of the communication unit. On the other hand, providing an additional processor device for executing further function programs creates the problem that the function programs have to be adapted or restructured so as to be able to exchange, from this processor device, communication data with the vehicle-external objects indirectly via the communication unit. This consequently requires an adaptation effort in the function programs.